The Death of Martin Luther King

In 1964 King won the Nobel Peace prize and as the decade drew on he widened his concerns to include the problem of poverty, among whites as well as blacks, and opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1967 he announced the founding of the Poor People’s Campaign to press the federal government into more effective action against poverty. In an essay not published until long after his death he maintained that the civil rights movement was compelling America ‘to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism and materialism’. Meanwhile black militants, angered by what they considered slow progress, were turning away from him and his principle of non-violence.